Nationals Arm Race

It’s that time of year. Its “Rule-5 time!” November 18th 2025 is the official “Deadline to File Reserve Lists” on the off-season calendar, which is a fancy way of saying the deadline to add certain minor leaguers to the active 40-man roster to protect them from the Rule-5 draft, which occurs in a few weeks at the December annual meetings.

We do this post every year, and it’s now perhaps our longest running post topic. Its our annual deep dive into our older prospects to see who the team may be thinking about protecting. Here’s links to past years posts on this topic: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010. I also publish a post-Rule5 compilation post with all the prior selectees and draftees after we see what the team does on the 18th.

Many people think Rule-5 is a waste of time for fringe prospects who don’t matter. For those of us who pore over minor league box scores, hoping to find a diamond in the rough of our 160+ minor leaguers who might some day be wearing red and white Nationals home jerseys, its a deep-dive into what might be for these players and an always-fun exercise looking at what may be the edges of our farm system.

As a reminder, Rule 5 eligibility is as follows for any player not on a 40-man roster:

• Signed at 18-years-old or younger, has been in the organization for five seasons post draft/signing
• Signed at 19-years-old or older, has been in the organization for four seasons post draft/signing

So, generally speaking this translates to for 2025:

• College players drafted/signed in 2022 or before
• High Schoolers drafted in 2021 or before
• IFAs signed in 2021 or before unless they were already 18 at signing, then 2022 or before.

(I say generally speaking because there are some IFAs who get signed later in the year, or who might have turned 19 by the time they sign and turn Rule-5 one year earlier than we thought. This hasn’t happened with us for a few years).

Heading into this year’s Rule-5 selection piece, the Nats have quite a bit of room on the 40-man, thanks to a slew of DFAs and a few FAs who expired off the roster. As of this writing, we’re at 34/40 on the 40-man roster. I don’t think that means we’re adding 6 guys at this deadline, but I don’t sense this front office cleared that much room for the heck of it this early in the off-season. We also have a brand new GM and front office, who brings a new approach to the Rule-5 Process. Boston has not been very active ahead of the Rule-5 deadlines; 2 protected last year, 2 the year before, none in 2022. So I’m not expecting a massive set of additions.

Important Links for Rule-5 consideration:

• Nats Draft Tracker looking at the 2022 class and older
• Nats IFA Tracker; looking at the 2021 class and older
• Nats Big Board: you can search for “22D” or “21IFA” to quickly find the players in that class
• Roster Resource: the Options/R5 column has a red “R5” for all Rule-5 candidates; I use this to cross-reference my work to make sure we’re both in sync, though they sometimes have errors.
• 2025 MLFA List from Baseball America: 34 MLFAs for us this year
• 2025 Nov 2025 Minor league Transactions, which shows the 34 MLFAs we had along with all the other 11/6/25 transactions
• 2025 AFL Rosters, since we usually send a couple R5 candidates there. This year the R5 guys were Bennett, Aldonis.

Here we go. There’s several categories of players to consider; we’ll go one by one.

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Group 1: Newly Eligible 2022 draft College Players this year. Holy cow there’s a lot; we’ve still essentially have our entire 2022 draft class still playing, so there’s lots to discuss.

• Trey Lipscomb (AAA): well, the first player to cover is … a weird one. Lipscomb just got outrighted off the 40-man roster, and he immediately becomes Rule-5 eligible. Clearly the Nats won’t be protecting him, so there’s no point in analyzing him. Per my contact at Fangraphs, this is a rarity but does happen, and such a player has gotten plucked in Rule-5 before, which seems odd b/c the exact same team that picked him could have just put in a waiver claim on him a couple weeks ago and retained the flexibility of optioning him all next year instead of the Rule-5 limitations. So, odds are he doesn’t get picked in rule-5 either.
• Kyle Luckham (AAA): 5.46 ERA in 7 AAA appearances this year, and has very little prospect cred. I think he’s likely a AAA ceiling guy, and I can’t see him as a Rule-5 drafting prospect since he’s not tooled up.
• Riley Cornelio (AAA): had a great 2025, solving High-A and AA and ending the year in AAA with similar numbers there to Luckham. What makes him different is the fact that the organization has continued to promote him year after year, and the industry has taken note of his progress. However, I admit that I’m “higher” on Cornelio than others in the industry. BA has zero professional scouting reports on him, but did note he added 2-3 mph from 2024-2025 on his fastball. At the very least I think someone would risk picking him as someone who could deal out of the bullpen. I think we’d be fools not to protect him, and I’d bet he’s pushing for a MLB rotation spot by mid 2026.
• Marquis Grissom (AAA) briefly was looking like a solid RP prospect, but then proved to be pretty hittable in AAA this season. Might still be someone who can grow into a middle reliever in the bigs, but he didn’t show enough this year for a team to think about carrying him all 2026.
• Jake Bennett (AA): one of our top 3-4 prospects right now, was unhittable for the entirety of 2025 after missing a year with TJ, and he’s a big part of the future. He’s going to be the #1 protection name submitted.
• Tyler Stuart (AA): solid prospect, out for all of 2026 with TJ, thus no chance he’s picked. If he had an injury-free 2026, he probably would have made it to AAA and we’d be protecting him.
• Chance Huff (AA); bonus-limited 8th rounder who was workable in AA this year, but who has no chance of getting picked because he’s not a prospect arm.
• Cayden Wallace (AA): he was the marquee prospect who we got for Hunter Harvey and was immediately in our system top 10, getting a NRI to spring training and having some talking about him possibly being better than House. An up-and-down AA season in 2025 pinched a lot of that talk, but this is still a 2nd rounder who can play on the dirt and can hit. He could be a backup infielder for a bad team’s MLB roster today. I think he is protection material.
• Johnathon Thomas (AA): a backup undersized 19th round outfielder in AA who’s behind nearly a dozen other outfielders on the depth chart isn’t a threat to get protected. I don’t think he’s getting picked either.
• Max Romero (AA): even in a catcher-thin system, you can’t protect a guy unless he can at least hit .200 right?
• Murphy Stehly (AA): the 10th rounder in 2022 is actually now 27 yrs old and he hit the crap out of the ball this year in AA. Great story, but not likely to get plucked just based on his drafting pedigree and age.
• Luke Young (AA) a middle relief RHP in AA with mediocre numbers; that just screams “org arm.”
• Courtland Lawson (High-A), Jared McKenzie (High-A): bench bats in High-A aren’t candidates. Somewhat surprised they’re still in the system.

Summary: Bennett a lock. Cornelio a strong candidate. Wallace a maybe.

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Group 1-A: 2022 NDFAs

• Matt Suggs (AA): the sole 22 NDFA we have remaining of nine we signed. He was the 3rd backup in AA this year and seems like he’s hanging around until he hits 6yr MLFA.

Summary: no candidates in this section.

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Group 2: Newly Eligible 2021 High School-age drafted players under consideration for protection

• TJ White (High-A): just finished his 3rd straight year in High A and still doesn’t have an OPS above .650. Not a candidate.

Summary: no candidates in this section

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Group 3: Newly Eligible 2021 signed IFAs under consideration for protection

• Armando Cruz (High-A): you can’t possibly think of protecting a guy who just hit .177 in High-A because he had a $3.9M bonus investment, could you? Well, we’ve done it in the past; Yasel Antuna was almost in the identical situation here. Luckily we have a new GM who could probably care less about these kinds of prior investments.
• Guys still in Low-A or Rookie Ball: Emmanuel Ramirez, Gabriel Agostini, Brayan Romero, Brian Polanco (who might have actually been eligible last year b/c he signed at 19), and Angel Roman: not candidates.

Summary: Cruz, if they’re fools.

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Group 4: Rule-5 Eligible Drafted/Domestic hold-overs of note from prior years

• Christian Franklin (AAA): solid 800+ OPS for us after being acquired in trade for Soroka. Most shops have him ranked in the 11-15 range of prospects for the system, and he’s a good OF depth piece. I think he’s a lock to get protected b/c he could be a backup OF for a slew of teams right now, and at the very least he’s someone the team could be looking to use in trade given our logjam of outfielders.
• Brad Lindsly (AAA): He got 58 ABs in 2025 as the 2nd or 3rd C on the AAA roster and probably made half a dozen trips to the “Developmental List.” He’s basically a bullpen catcher with a playing contract.
• Holden Powell (AAA): made it to AAA and then walked a guy an inning.
• Seth Shuman (AAA): got shelled in AAA, lost his rotation spot. He was a 2019 draftee but somehow didn’t get MLFA declared.
• Brandon Boissiere (AA): had a nice year in AA at age 25; probably not enough to be protected.
• Erik Tolman (AA): developmentally behind after missing a year with injury, mostly succeeded in High-A this year. Not a candidate, despite being lefty. Perhaps if he was closer to the majors.
• Jack Sinclair (AA): 5+ era as a 26yr old in AA: he may have hit his ceiling.
• Dustin Saenz (AA): lost his rotation spot, might be converted to lefty reliever, but not terribly impressive this year.
• Brendan Collins (High-A): kind of like Tolman in that he basically missed a whole year. Side-arming middle reliever seems like AA may be his limit.

Fun fact; Jake Irvin (2018 4th rounder) is now our oldest remaining originally drafted player. He’s the sole player remaining from the 2018 draft active for the Nats; nobody older. For almost the entire life of this team, the answer to this question was either Ryan Zimmerman or Stephen Strasburg.

Summary: Franklin a lock.

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Group 4A: 2021 and older NDFAs,

• Tyler Schoff (AAA): spent most of the season on the 60-day DL, seems like he’ll get another year with us.
• Peyton Glavine (High-A): missed all of 2024, decent in 2025 but a year behind developmentally.

Summary: no candidates here

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Group 5: IFAs: 2019 and older (we didn’t really have a 2020 IFA class)

• Kevin Made (AA): lots of promise, little delivery. We’ve talked about him ad nauseum in the comments. If he was a more consistent bat, he’d be a top 10 prospect, in AAA and probably pushing the likes of Tena and Nunez off the 40-man roster to be our go-to backup middle infielder. But he’s not, so he’s not.
• Pablo Aldonis (High-A): stellar numbers in High-A as a lefty reliever, after missing all of 2024 due to injury. This is an interesting one; great numbers and clearly good stuff, but hasn’t ever gotten out of A-ball. I’d think he is safe from being drafted in the major league phase for sure, but the Nats sending him to the AFL also put a big shiny target on his back. His AFL numbers werne’t too bad: 11ip, 6 games 2 “starts,” 14/5 K/BB and a 1.33 whip. It seems nonsensical for a team to pick him and think he’s gonna stick in their bullpen for an entire year, especially since we’re not talking about a well known MLBpipeline top30 guy.
• guys in Low-A or Rookie ball: Victor Farias, Andy Luis, Juan Abreu

Summary: Aldonis a maybe.

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So, where does that leave us? Summarizing the Groups:

• Group 1 Protection Candidates: Bennett a lock. Cornelio a strong maybe, Wallace a maybe.
• Group 1A Protection Candidates: none
• Group 2 Protection Candidates: none
• Group 3 Protection Candidates: Cruz, if they’re fools
• Group 4 Protection Candidates: Franklin a lock
• Group 4a Protection Candidates: none
• Group 5 Protection Candidates: Aldonis a maybe

My Prediction: Team protects Bennet, Franklin.

If it was Todd Boss the GM, i’d go four: Bennett Franklin, Cornelio, and Wallace.

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Two things I’ll update to this post when they happen:

• Nats Actual Rule-5 protection results: on 11/18/25, the Nats added three: Bennett, Franklin, and Cornelio. So, they added Cornelio in a surprise to this observer, but didn’t add Wallace, which was always going to be a stretch.

• Actual Rule-5 draft results in Dec: will be added later, likely in a new post.

11/6/25 was a big moving day in baseball: its 5 days after the World Series ended, and on the same day all 60-day DL guys (in the majors and minors) have to be returned to active roster status, and all free agents are declared. In the majors, that means the “exclusive” bargaining period ends (which is almost never used anymore), but more importantly to this site and this audience, it means that dozens of prospects that we’ve sometimes tracked for 6-7 years are now cut loose.

Here’s a look at the churn at both the 40-man level and in the minors. All these moves are now updated on the Big Board, as well as the Draft Tracker and the IFA tracker and my internal Nats Prospect Rankings page, which saw a slew of guys I had ranked just a few weeks ago get cut loose. I’ll talk about them below in a bit.

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Major League Free Agents

• Josh Bell 1b/DH 11/2/25: FA
• Paul deJong 2b/3b 11/2/25: FA
• Derek Law rhp 11/2/25: FA

In other words, the three guys the team couldn’t even trade for a bag of balls at the trade deadline.

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40-man DFA’s

• CJ Stubbs c 10/30/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA
• Ogasawara, Shinnosuki rhp 10/30/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA
• Mason Thompson rhp 10/30/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA, refused assignment, FA
• Eduardo Salazar rhp 10/30/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA, refused assignment, FA
• Jorge Alfaro c 10/31/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA, refused assignment, FA
• Zach Brzycky rhp 11/6/25: DFA’d, claimed by Miami, gone
• Ryan Loutos rhp 11/6/25: DFA’d, claimed by Seattle, gone
• Trey Lipscomb 3b 11/6/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA

So, that’s 11 total guys removed from the 40-man with FAs and DFAs. We added back our four 60-day DL guys (Grey, Herz, Williams, Millas), which puts us at exactly 34/40 as of this writing. That’s a ton of room for the next phase of the off-season (Rule5 and Free Agency).

Most surprising out of this list? Probably Brzycky, who was a NDFA and kind of “found gold” for the player dev staff. He didn’t get a ton of MLB time and I’m surprised they cut him and kept other relievers for the time being. It’s no surprise to me he got claimed.

There’s not a ton of “fat” left on the roster now; most of the guys I had listed early on my “next guys to cut” are now gone. I could still see the team part ways with a couple of waiver claim/MLFA relievers that made their way onto the active roster (Fernandez, Pilkington), but the next cuts after that will be deep.

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MLFAs declared

Here’s the meat of this post. As of 11/6/25, all 6-year MLFAs were declared. Generally speaking, this means the following are now declared MLFAs:

• anyone drafted in 2019
• Most IFAs signed in 2018 under a certain age.
• Some older IFAs signed in 2019: if you were already 18 you’re like a draftee.
• Furthermore, anyone we’ve signed as a MLFA along the way one a one-year deal, or who hasn’t already resigned on some other deal we’re unaware of, is also newly declared.

So, from the massive list of 11/6/25 minor league transactions, here’s what that looks like. We’ll go level by level:

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From AAA: no fewer than 16 guys hitting MLFA.

2B	Arruda, JT#
CA	Stubbs, C.J.
DH	Yepez ,Juan
SP	Solesky, Chase
LF	De La Cruz, Carlos
SU	Cuevas, Michael
LR	Conley, Bryce
MID	Adon, Joan
SP	Sampson, Adrian
MID	Dunshee, Parker
MID	Acosta, Daison
SS	Cluff, Jackson*
MID	Davila, Garrrett*
MID	Mejia, Erick#
CF	Schnell, Nick
CA	Mejia, Francisco

Some of these guys I absolutely had ranked in my end of year ranking. The highest was Schnell, who I had just outside my top 30. I had Acosta and Davila in the 50-60 range, Erick Mejia in the 70s, and then a few more in the 80-90 range. Only four of these MLFAs from AAA were home grown (Arruda, Cuevas, Adon, and Cluff). Nonetheless, 16 guys off a 31 player roster is a huge number gone.

AAA now has 15 players remaining; and basically the entire 2025 pitching staff is gone. Interestingly, there are a couple names who seem like they should have been declared MLFAs but who remain; Pena (an 17IFA, Orelvis Martinez (just signed as a 26 MLFA), and Seth Shuman (a 19Draftee who should have been declared). I don’t entirely trust these rosters or milb.com transactions, so its possible these guys were also declared MLFAs and missed the announcement, or its possible they’ve already re-signed for 2026. Especially with Shuman, I hope he’s back in the fold.

Also worth mentioning here, a shoutout to Darren Baker, who was released a bit earlier in the off-season to pursue other opportunities.

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From AA: 8 guys

SP	Atencio, Jose
CF	Williams, Donta’ *
CL	Santos, Junior
CF	DeShields, Delino
MID	Vasquez, Samuel
LR	Knowles, Lucas*
1B	Naranjo, Joe
LR	Choi, Hyun-Il

Just two of these 8 were home grown (Knowles and Atencio). I had Atencio ranked relatively high on my end of season ranks (#47) and I had high hopes that the team might retain his services. I had a couple of these guys in the 100+ range (Vasquez, Knowles, Naranjo). Lastly I thought the team could hold onto Choi a bit longer, but perhaps not.

I don’t see any players remaining on the AA roster who seem like they should have been declared. The oldest draftee/signee is Kevin Made, a 19IFA who was young and retains one more year of control.

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From High-A: Six guys.

SU	Otanez, Johan
CA	Colmenares, Jose
LR	Caceres, Bryan
LR	Arias, Wander
SU	Montero, Euri
DH/CF	De La Rosa, Jeremy*

I think it goes without saying that, if you’re not out of A-ball by the time you’ve had 6 seasons in the minors, you’re not really a prospect. And, true to form, the only one of these six guys who I even mentioned in my rankings was De la Rosa, and that’s only because at one point a couple years ago he was in the top 30 range.

Wilmington still has a couple of rostered guys who seem like they should have been declared MLFAs: setup man Yeuris Jimenez and maybe Adam Bloebaum, who was signed as a “MLFA” in 2025 but may really be an “NDFA” for eligibility purposes. Pablo Aldonis (currently in the AFL) was a 19IFA but was young and gets one more year.

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Low-A: just 3 guys

2B	Rivero, Yoander
MID	Dowdell, Kevin*
SU	Kane, Tommy*

Rivero was home grown, the other two were 2025MLFAs. Rivero, coincidentally, was the last remaining 2018IFA player we had, closing the books on what turned out to be a really awful IFA class. The most accomplished player out of the 2018 IFA class was either Rodney Theophile (MLFA last year after getting to AA) or oft-injured Jose Atencio, who made it to AA but missed all of 2025.

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Nobody was cut loose from the FCL team, and just one name from DSL who, frankly, I didn’t even realize was rostered. Sometimes the team sneaks these signings without much in the way of announcement.

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All in all, 34 MLFAs declared on 11/6/25. With all the outrights and MLFAs, the domestic system is now down to 139 players.

Of the 125 players that I ranked at year’s end, 16 of them are now MLFAs.

I think the biggest “shock” to the system is just how much of this year’s AAA squad is now gone. There’s not nearly enough players set to rise up from AA, and there’s not enough guys who would be dropping down from MLB right now (34 on the 40-man, meaning just 8 would move down not including known DL guys). This spells a ton of new MLFAs set to come into the fold this coming spring.

Baseball America is always one of the first (if not the first) shops to put out an early top 10 for teams In November. They then follow it up with their more comprehensive Handbook and top 30 towards the end of January. But, it’s good to get a read on where they think things are at the top. For what its worth, last year BA did not change its top 10 rankings from Nov 2024 to its eventual release in Jan 2025, so it seems likely this is their top 10 for us.

Here’s their top 10 for 2026, and where BA had these players ranked in Mid August, after all the trades and drafting had settled.

Current Rank	8/13/25 Rank	First Name	Last Name	Position
1	1	Eli	Willits	SS
2	2	Jarlin	Susana	RHP (Starter)
3	3	Travis	Sykora	RHP (Starter)
4	4	Alex	Clemmey	LHP (Starter)
5	9	Seaver	King	SS
6	15	Jake	Bennett	LHP (Starter)
7	5	Luke	Dickerson	SS/CF
8	7	Coy	James	SS
9	16	Angel	Feliz	3B/SS
10	11	Landon	Harmon	RHP (Starter)

Here’s some quick observations of this top 10.

• This seems like a very “conservative” top 10, one that’s mostly based on youth, ceiling, and promise. Four of these 10 guys didn’t play above rookie ball, if at all, in 2025.
• A reminder: doing a top 10 is easy. Doing a top 30 is harder.
• BA has no changes to its top four players from mid August, despite a year gone for Sykora and a likely delay in the start of his 2026 season for Susana. I’m not sure I agree with this honestly, especially since Susana was hurt more than once in 2025.
• They elevated Seaver King to #5, despite his season-long malaise, but perhaps with the benefit of seeing his performance in Arizona. Interesting. Is it fair to just “throw out” his entire 2026 at this point thanks to some ill-advised piece of advice from an unnamed Nats player development staffer? My ranking him at #16 just after the season is looking like a take that won’t age well, and I will be putting him back into the top 10 with my own pre-2026 ranking at some point next spring.
• Bennett gets the expected bump well back into the top 10.
• Despite major struggles, Dickerson only drops a couple spots. His ranking is going to be a point of discussion with all these shops this off-season: i’ve seen him as high as #3, and as low as #27, on lists so far this off-season.
• Our two 2025 draft $2M+ bonus prep kids James and Harmon are 8 and 10
• Feliz continues to march up the boards, now inside the top 10 of a major ranking for the first time.

Most of us have labeled Seaver King at best a disappointment so far in his career, and at worst a failed pick, after getting picked 10th a couple years ago, having now seen the glittering debut performance of possible Nats picks Trey Yesevage or the high prospect ranks of the likes of Braden Montgomery.

But, he’s destroying the ball in the AFL, a league that’s “supposed” to basically be like playing in a AA-level all star game every day.

What’s going on in Arizona?

MLB.com’s Sam Dykstra had the following to say in today’s “Early Standouts from the AFL” email newsletter about King:

Seaver King peaking late: Few Fall Leaguers needed a good autumn as much as the Nationals’ 2024 first-rounder and No. 7-ranked prospect.

While other members of his Draft class surged to the Majors this summer, King hit just .244/.294/.337 with six homers in 125 games between High-A Wilmington and Double-A Harrisburg — two notably pitcher-friendly ballparks. Here in the desert, the right-handed-hitting shortstop has looked much more like his Wake Forest self. He’s 13-for-31 (.419) with two homers, five doubles and only three strikeouts through seven games.

King has been routinely on fastballs, batting .533 against them in the early going while he shoots balls to the gaps. He could stand to pull the ball a little better with his homers going to right-center and right, but with an early hard-hit rate of 71.4 percent and three barrels in 14 batted balls, he is finding the right part of the bat generally in the early small sample. Add in good speed — he has two recorded Sprint Speeds above 30 ft/sec — and King is pushing his stock back up headed into his second offseason.

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A discussion about Park Factors in our Minor League system

We know Wilmington is a super pitcher’s park .. I’m not sure I realized that Harrisburg was as well. I went digging for Park factors; here’s Baseball America’s 2024 Minor League Park factor data. Here’s all our parks in one spot:

Team	Level	Org	Runs PF	Runs Mult	HR PF	HR Mult	wOBA PF	wOBA Mult
Rochester	AAA	WSH	86	0.931	75	0.873	93	0.963
Harrisburg	AAA	WSH	88	0.939	107	1.037	95	0.974
Wilmington	High-A	WSH	93	0.965	84	0.922	98	0.988
Fredericksburg	Low-A	WSH	97	0.984	104	1.018	100	1.001

So, basically, every one of our full season parks is a pitcher’s park. And, as you move up the chain, each higher level’s park is actually harder from a wOBA perspective than the last. Wilmington, which we keep hearing is a death valley for hitters … is really just death for homers (which explains why our team leader in high-A for homers was just 7 this year). It’s 98 for wOBA in general. Harrisburg is actually worse for Runs and wOBA; it just has a spike for HRs due to its pretty easy pull power alleys (325 down the lines, 350 to LCF and RCF).

Aside: When looking at this HR park factor for AAA, by the way, it definitely puts a different spin on the 2025 HR production of the likes of Schnell (21 hrs in 95 AAA games) or Pinckney (20 hrs in 125 AAA games).

Anyway, back to King; We also read in another blog a quote from King from a fellow draftee prospect about approach and patience, something that my fellow Nats bloggers have used to basically draw the conclusion that the entire Nats player development staff is incompetent because King got a tip from a buddy and has had a nice first week in the AFL.

I like that he’s showing power to the opposite field, AND he’s showing speed to the point where a prospect maven is pointing it out. I’m not going to suddenly jump the guy 10 spots in my prospect rankings … but something tells me MLBpipeline may, based on this report.

Can’t wait to see where he goes from here. But i’ll ask this question tot he group? If he finishes the AFL with his current slash line (.419/.486/.774) will it change your mind on his prognosis? He’s only about 7 games through a 30 game season.

One of my favorite posts every off-season is to try to guess what the 2026 rotations might look like, based on 2025 performance, who’s coming back from injury, who the team may or may not pursue in FA, and how many veteran MLFAs the teams needs to fill out our perennially empty AAA rotation. Here’s that off-season thought piece, which of course takes zero FA acquisitions or trades into account as of this date, and makes some strong assumptions on the health of some arms (as noted as we go).

So, Here’s a quick analysis of where we ended 2025 and where we might start 2026 for our entire system. In each section, i’ve got the “candidates” lined up roughly from most to least-likely to be on that team, and then those that make sense to do so are pushed down to the next level.

Yes, it’s way too early to do this. I can revisit this next Spring with updated information/transactions, then use it in early April 2026 posts when we see who the rotations are, to see how decent a job we did predicting. I’m always up for proving how bad I am at player evaluation 🙂

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MLB

In House 40-man Candidates: Gore, Grey, Cavalli, Lord, Alvarez, Irvin, Parker, Ogasawara, Lao, Eder (Herz, Williams)

Thoughts: Gore, assuming he doesn’t get traded, should be next year’s Opening Day starter. I’m assuming Grey is ready to go for opening day; he’ll have the entire off-season to prepare, and I can’t see any reason why he’d be delayed, even though he only got a few rehab starts in 2025. Cavalli gave the team 10 starts at a near-league average ERA+ after a long time away and had peripherals that give some hope (velocity up from 2022, Babip of .327 meaning he was a bit unlucky, etc). So, if we got Grey back to 2023 numbers when he was an All-Star, and if Gore and Cavalli pitched to their capabilities consistently, that’s a nice little 1-2-3 start to your rotation with some upside. At worse case all three are hovering around a 95-98 ERA+ as they did this year, which are all typical 3rd-4th starters. That’s the good news.

Here’s the bad news: Irvin led the league in Earned Runs and Homers allowed, and finished dead last amongst qualified starters in FIP, fWAR, and a couple other categories. Parker would have been right there with him in dead last had he gotten a few more innings. What should you do with a guy who’s the worst starter in the league? Well duh, you should put him in the bullpen. Lord’s splits as a starter were not good: his ERA was 2 full “points” higher than as a reliever, and I think he needs to go back to the pen, as much as I like his ascension story to the majors. Alvarez’s debut couldn’t have gone better, but is he a MLB starter? Nobody seems thinks so; he got almost zero prospect love in his career, and I sense he’ll be a rotation placeholder, morphing into the classical 4-A rubber-armed multi-role lefty for this team for the next few years until he runs out of minor league options, but he held his own and (for now) is probably the 4th or 5th starter in 2026.

I don’t buy Ogasawara as a MLB-capable starter; I sense he’s heading to AAA to prove (or disprove) my theory in 2026. Waiver pickup Lao actually had great AAA numbers this year as a starter and was only up in the MLB bullpen to fill a hole at the end of the season; maybe he competes for the 5th starter job next year. Same with trade acquisition Eder, though his AAA numbers weren’t nearly as good. I don’t sense Herz or Williams will be ready to go for opening day 2026; certainly not Herz, but Williams’ “brace” surgery may get him back quicker. Even if he was 100% healthy, he was abhorrent as a starter in 2025 despite his near all-star performance the first half of 2024, and I sense he should be in the bullpen going forward. So, for now they’re all out of the running.

So, what does that leave us with? Three acceptable starters and a bunch of question marks. How much is this team willing to spend on the open market? A 66-96 team is more than one Starting Pitcher away from competing, so my guess is, another mid-level $10M/year starter, open competition for the 5th starter job, hope for incremental improvements from Gore/Grey/Cavalli, and hope for some help coming up from guys who are in AA or AAA right now.

Prediction for 2026:

• Rotation: Gore, Grey, Cavalli, a Free Agent, Alvarez or a spring training competition for 5th.
• Lord, Irvin, Parker to MLB bullpen
• DL: Herz, Williams
• Ogasawara, Lao in AAA rotation
• Eder in AAA bullpen

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AAA

In House Candidates: Lao, Eder, Ogasawara, Solesky, Sampson, Conley, Shuman, Luckham, Cornelio, Bennett

Thoughts: First off, we have four guys likely out the door here as being one year MLFAs (Sampson, Conley) who never earned their way up, and another couple guys (Solesky and Shuman) who I believe are be at the end of their 6year runs with us (both will be 28 this offseason, both had 5+ ERAs in AAA, and both seem like they’ve done all they can done in the game). So, I’m assuming these four are gone for consideration next year, at least as starters. The whole Covid year and what it did to FAs still confuses me, so I may have it wrong here, but even if they’re still under contract, neither merits another year in the rotation based on 2025 performance.

Despite being in the MLB bullpen for most of September, Lao, Eder, and Ogasawara have been primarily starters for their minor league careers and one would think the team would want to see if they can continue. Especially Lao, who had really good AAA starting numbers in Seattle’s system before inexplicably getting waived in September. However, I could also see the argument (especially for Eder) of trying them in the bullpen. I’m not sure Luckham has what it takes to succeed as a starter, so I can see him moving into the Shuman role for next year (LR/SS).

So that leaves Lao, Cornelio, and Ogasawara returning to the AAA rotation for another year, joined by Bennett rising up, and then filled out with a MLFA signing. I can’t really see the team dumping the three vanquished starters (Lord, Parker, Irvin) to AAA. We might see Susana back earlier than expected and he could fit in here relatively soon. But opening day 2026, this makes sense.

The team also still has Lara and Adon, both former starters, and one (Lara) still with some prospect love, who pitched their way out of starter roles and who both had abhorrent numbers in the pen in 2025. Could the team return to them as starters? I don’t think so, even if we need them. We need to see if they can contribute at the MLB level out of the bullpen.

Prediction for 2026:

• Rotation: Lao, Ogasawara, Cornelio, Bennett, veteran MLFA
• MLFA/released: Solesky, Sampson, Conley, Shuman
• To the bullpen: Luckham to bullpen as Long reliever/Spot Starter, Eder to bullpen as lefty specialist.

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AA

In House Candidates: Kent, Clemmey, Tolman, Choi, Atencio, Sthele (Susana, Stuart, Sykora hurt)

Thoughts: The Nats late-season promotions of basically the entire season-ending AA rotation was the latest demonstration of their typical pattern of starter handling: they like to get starters’ feet wet in the new level before the new season, so we basically already know what most of the opening day AA rotation will look like. Kent, Clemmey, and Tolman all excelled in High-A this year, earned promotions, and struggled in short AA stints. They make perfect sense to start in AA, though Tolman seems to be more suited at this point as a multi-role reliever, so I’m projecting him to the pen. Atencio sat the entire 2025 season on the AA D/L: He was assigned to Harrisburg on Opening Day, then hit the DL before he could make a start. If he’s ready to go for opening day 2026, then he’s here. He was already planned on being part of the 2025 AA rotation, so I’d imagine he’ll come right back here when healthy. If not, maybe we’re pushing Tolman back into the rotation.

Choi, the 2024 minor league rule5 pickup, was up and back from AAA without holding onto his spot and makes sense to start in AA again. I’d imagine he’d make sense to start in the rotation until Susana is ready to go: if Susana is ready opening day, then we have to make a decision on one of Choi, Sthele, or Atencio.

When Susana is ready to go, you either push Choi to bullpen, demote Atencio, or send Susana straight to AAA. I mean, why not? He had 11 AA starts this year and struck out 70 in 47 innings; what exactly does he have left to prove there? I’m sure AAA could find room (Ogasawara to bullpen, or something).

Prediction for 2026:

• Rotation: Kent, Clemmey, Choi, Sthele, Atencio
• D/L: Susana, Stuart, Sykora
• To the Bullpen: Tolman as LR/SS

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High-A

Candidates: Randall, Garcia, Meckley, Swan, Linan, Polanco, Tepper, Tejeda, Sales

Thoughts: Last year it seemed like Low-A was the place where we’d have a traffic jam; 2026 will be High-A. I count 9-10 legitimate candidates for the High-A roster next year. Lets talk about them.

Randall only had 16 low-A starts before getting pushed up to High-A and traded to us, but was also a 2024 3rd rounder from a decent baseball school (San Diego), so I can’t see him going back down; he will be in High-A for sure. Garcia got solid 2024 draft bonus and dominated Low-A before his promotion: he’s guaranteed to be in this rotation again in 2026 based on his “investment.” Meckley is kind of like Garcia but lesser on all counts; less draft bonus, lesser performance; I think he’s a victim of numbers and heads to the bullpen. Swan started this season in LA’s High-A team, finished it in ours, and showed basically the same stuff year long: good arm but wild. I think he repeats High-A but could also get socially promoted if a need arises given. He could also go into the pen and transition to a high K reliever.

Linan only gave us one High-A start before hitting the DL: he had the best numbers of the three trade acquisitions for their prior teams and probably will be one of the first to move up. But what was his injury? I’m putting either Linan on the opening-day DL, based on ending 2025 on the DL. Post publish update: Thanks to commenter Will for pointing this out: Linan has been put on the AFL roster and is pitching in Arizona, so therefore we can assume his injury was minor. I’m revamping the below prediction as a result.

Polanco just turned 24 and just finished a full season making 23 starts for Low-A; he’s moving up, with nothing left to prove in Low-A. He’s gonna either sink or swim in High-A. Tepper spent entire 2025 on the DL and his usage has been all over the road; I’m not sure he’s ready to be a starter, so I’m guessing he goes to the pen. Tejeda suddenly stopped pitching on August 3rd, but was a gun-slinging 6′ 8″ effective starter before that; i’m hoping nothing bad happened, and with Linan confirmed healthy i’ll hedge and start Tejeda on the DL. Trade acquisition Sales finished off a great year in Low-A, pitching well for both his old and new teams despite being “just” a 10th rounder; he’s solved Low-A and has to be here.

I could make the argument that Randall is less effective than Swan and those two switch places. Or, you could look at Swan’s K/9 rate and think ‘high end closer’ and put him in the pen.

If Linan is healthy, what happens? He’s a bit young yet for AA and definitely needs more High-A time, so perhaps he pushes Tejeda to the bullpen. Or, perhaps Tejeda is still hurt from whatever injury he sustained on or about August 3rd. But for now, here’s what i’m thinking:

With Linan confirmed healthy, but Tejeda not necessarily, I’m putting Linan in rotation and Tejeda on DL to start 2026. If Tejeda is indeed healthy … then someone has to head to the pen, because I think Tejeda needs to start for now. I think if this comes to pass, you’re moving Polanco to the bullpen.

Prediction for 2026:

• Rotation: Randall, Garcia, Polanco, Linan, Sales
• D/L: Tejeda
• To the Bullpen: Meckley, Tepper, Swan

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Low-A

Candidates: Sullivan, Romero, Johnson, Agostini, Farias, Feliz plus 2026 college draftees Tonghini, Maddox, Moore, Biven, Huesman, Puk

Thoughts:

Sullivan, the 2023 draftee, missed basically a year and a half, but has more or less dominated Low-A in the 9 cumulative starts he’s made there. He’ll turn 24 in May of next year and really does no good in Low-A, but there’s just too many arms so he starts in Low-A again. He returns. Same with Johnson, who made 8 low-A starts with a 5-something ERA this year as a very old 2025 draft signing. Romero made 14 Low-A starts, missing a month or so of time, with middling results; he’s heading to the bullpen. Agostini missed most of 2025 with injury but is a solid prospect; he should return if healthy.

Two new names moving up from FCL for next year should be Feliz and Farias. Feliz is looking like a solid prospect and is starting to get top-20 prospect love; he had a 2.20 ERA in the FCL this year after posting a 2.96 ERA in the DSL last year. He moves up and is an important young arm for us. Farias wasn’t great in the FCL this year but is already 23 and kind of has to move up; i’m putting him as the 5th starter in 2026 unless the team wants to compete him with one of the 2025 college guys.

All six college 2025 draftees are mentioned in Low-A to begin 2026, but I think all of them will go straight to the bullpen based on their college usage and pro potential. We’ll summarize our 2025 draft day posts here briefly; Tonghini was a setup-guy at Arizona. Maddox was a college SEC starter but a senior sign/5.56 ERA guy. Moore was a bullpen guy his first two years in college and pitched his way out of ODU’s bullpen before getting drafted, but wasn’t great as a starter. Biven was a swingman at Louisville. Huesman barely pitched at all at Vanderbilt, and Puk was a multi-inning Opener for FIU. None of our drafted college arms really project to be useful rotation pieces. The best option to start would be either Maddox or Moore if they need an arm.

Prediction for 2026:

• Rotation: Sullivan, Johnson, Agostini, Feliz, Farias
• D/L:
• To the Bullpen: Romero, Tonghini, Maddox, Moore, Biven, Huesman, Puk

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FCL

Candidates: Harmon, Sime, Lunar, Portorreal, Reyes, Carela, Gimenez

Thoughts: Harmon and Sime are our two big bonus prep arms from the 2025 draft: I suppose its possible they start in Low-A in 2026, but that typically hasn’t been the MO of this team with its high school draftees. I’m guessing they do XST, ease into pitching, start in FCL and then maybe move up to Low-A later in the summer if they blow away their fellow teenagers in the complex league.

Lunar and Portorreal repeat FCL after middling 2025 results. Both are still relatively young as a 24IFA and 23IFA respectively. I’m guessing they make way for the three more promising arms coming up from the DSL and move to the bullen.

Moving up from the DSL are the three best starter prospects from the island this year in Reyes, Carela, and Gimenez. All three pitched solidly and it will be interesting to see how they fare. Reyes is a bit older as a 23IFA, while the other two didn’t start the year in the DSL rotation but pitched their way there as 24IFAs. None of these three were big money IFA signings, so they’ll be on a short leash.

One thing to keep in mind: the team loves using the FCL as a rehab weigh-station, so it’s entirely possible the “rotation” ends up being 4 guys and a rotation rehab start; they did this for a while this year.

Prediction for 2026:

• Rotation: Harmon, Sime, Reyes, Carela, Gimenez
• D/L:
• To the Bullpen: Portorreal, Lunar

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DSL

Candidates: Torrellas, De La Cruz, Robles, Mejia, Carrasco, Reynoso, plus 26IFA class

Thoughts: Torrellas, De La Cruz, and Robles finished 2025 in the rotation. Mejia and Carrasco were in the rotation to start 2025 but pitched their way out; they could get another shot but seem more likely to head to the pen. Reynoso is an unknown, having pitched in 2024 then missed all of 2025; i’d guess he’s bullpen bound.

The team signed 6 arms last January; not one of them featured in the 2025 rotation. Perhaps we’ll see some of them step up, but it doesn’t seem likely. Not one 25IFA arm had decent numbers this season. However, they also didn’t feature a single 24IFA signing in the 2024 rotation, preferring to bring them onboard a bit more slowly. The Nats havn’t really focused big bonus dollars on arms lately; just one non-trivial bonus amount in the last several drafts (Jose Feliz for $120k in 2023, then several guys in the 2021 class who are already gone), so it’s little surprise they struggle to find competent starters in the DSL.

Prediction for 2026:

• Rotation: Torrellas, De La Cruz, Robles, plus two 25IFA or 26IFAs.
• D/L:
• To the Bullpen: Mejia, Carrasco, Reynoso

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Ok, so that’s what we’re looking at. This may change as we do MLFA releases and signings this coming off-season, or if we add/remove players via trade.

I hope I didn’t miss anyone, but let me know if i’m missing someone obvious and/or if you think i’m crazy.

Hey there Readers

I’m going to use this opportunity to give some incremental updates and call out some improvements I’ve made to a couple of the main online Nats Data Resources I maintain. Just in case you hadn’t been to these resources in a while.

As always, any suggestions for improvements or errors noticed are always appreciated.

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Big Board

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/186nm-v5F-zTCoR2Be7TFYM3e2cZ-gYi2WVqJLEkHdmc/edit?usp=sharing

The Big Board shows our entire system, from MLB to DSL, with players generally in their starting spots at any given time, rotations kept in the order they appear, and bullpen arms kept roughly in their roles. The 2025 Rosters are now frozen for the end of the season, and I’ve created the 2026 Roster and 2026 Release page to start keeping track of player transactions (first one for the new tab was Darren Baker’s requested release).

MLB has recalled all 40-man players, and restored all 7 and 15-day DL players to the active roster, so MLB shows at 40/40 right now. The five 60-day DL guys won’t be returned until the World Series is over; that will correspond with the technical separation of these FAs to be: Bell, Law (who himself is on the 60-day), deJong, Alfaro, 25MLFA Pilkington, and 24MLFA Stubbs, so I don’t imagine we’ll have any DFA’s to return the 60-day DL guys at the onset. However, the exact terms of these MLFA deals can vary, so they actually may be multi-year deals. AAA also cleared up all its DL and Restricted list in late September, but the lower leagues have not, so there’s still a slew of DL and Restricted names on those rosters.

There’s a small number at the top of the Big Board, which keeps track of the total number of players under contract in the four domestic minor leagues. It attempts to keep track of this number to see how it compares to the 165 total system limit, which the team flirted with a couple times this season. That’s the main improvement I’ve added to the Big Board lately, in addition to the color coding of Promotions and Demotions throughout the season. Each player is also a link to their milb.com page (for minor leaguers) or their baseball-reference.com page (if they’re primarily MLBers).

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Draft Tracker

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qd5DS9GlmkQOEh_zGhOvlhHK0EegqY1uJB4mLGmRBaY/edit?usp=sharing

I made a relatively large addition to the Draft Tracker this year: I added the “High Level” column to each player. I did this because I have dreams of doing a massive analysis trying to quantify what makes for a “good draft” by looking at the lower rounds to see what expectations are for these players. For example: if you draft a college guy in the 15th, where do you “expect” that player to get to? If they never get out of Low-A, that seems to have “met expectations” for that player, but if they get to AA is that a win?

Anyway, this analysis stalled once I started getting into the 2019 and prior drafts, where we went to 40 rounds instead of the current 20. I’ve been critical of the sport for cutting these 20 rounds (and cutting the entire Short-A level), but must admit it was kind of shocked at how many of our draftees never got out of Short-A. For example; in 2017 we drafted 33 players; here was the high-level breakdown:

• MLB: 5: Romero, Crowe, Tetreault, Cousins, Klobotis, Raquet
• AAA: 3: Freeman, Dunlap, Johnston
• AA: 2: Connell, Troop
• High-A: 4
• Low-A: 10
• Short-A: 6
• FCL: 2

A slew of the Low-A top-outs were in Short-A in the draft year of 2017, got assigned to Low-A to start 2018, and were released directly out of that league. So, the question is, is this a typical distribution expectation for a 40-round draft? Was this generally speaking a good or bad draft (hint: this was an awful draft, even with 6 guys getting to the majors, since 3 of them made the majors for other teams and the other three combined gave us a career -1.0 bWAR).

I initially replaced the Rule5 Eligible column with this high level, thinking that Rule5 eligible was a useless field, but then immediately returned it. Thank god for backups.

My big “value add” to the Draft Tracker generally is to have year-specific Draft worksheets where I keep track of the exact Bonus dollars as they’re announced, which gives us some insight into the negotiations for later-signing guys. I also have schools, commits, social media links, NDFAs, etc. I have done this same analysis for “local draft guys” (i.e. DC/MD/VA players) in the past, but kind of have petered out on tracking local players in general over the past few years. Also of note; the player names are links to milb.com pages/baseball-reference.com pages for convenience as with the Big Board.

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IFA Tracker

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ksPorXhEHhtkNAGqxrJWqUFkvioMgoWhBU50uaZstc8/edit?usp=sharing

A couple years ago I had the brilliant notion to create an IFA tracker in the same format as the Draft Tracker, because, well, why not; its an important way we ingest talent and we sign 20+ players a year.

My big value add to the IFA tracker this year was to add in High Level, as I did with the Draft tracker. This analysis led to a pretty obvious observation; a huge majority of these players never get out of the DSL. Like, a massive percentage. Take our 2018 class; we had 38 signees. here’s their highest levels:

• DSL: 16
• FCL: 13
• Low-A: 3
• High-A: 4
• AA: 2
• None higher

Five of these guys are still active, having resigned after their initial 7year stint expired after 2024, but who may be re-hitting MLFA this off-season. One may still pan out; Atencio, who was solid for us as a AA starter in 2025 then missed the entirety of 2025 with injury but who is still just 24. But, will he re-sign? did he already? The Covid year throws all this analysis into doubt.

Nonetheless, this is a lot of players churned through DSL and FCL for very little payoff.

The last time we even got a MLB player out of an IFA draft was in 2019 (Andry Lara), before that 2017 (Ferrer). There were more in 2016 and prior, but I havn’t gone back to do “high level” analysis that far back because it becomes pretty difficult to track down these players at some point: the DSL rosters aren’t nearly as comprehensively kept as the domestic rosters. Also, bonus dollar figures are incredibly tough to come by, even in recent years. For example, I know that our IFA 2025 pool was $6.2M, but I could only account for about $4.9M of bonus dollars being spent. We had 10 signees with no dollar amounts announced; were they all $10k? More? Less? Did we really leave $1.3M of bonus dollars on the table? I certainly hope not.

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Nationals Prospects Ranks

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xs9fmb-dctE90hTS3bdozznETS-Oc3GsMuGzRo2faUc/edit?usp=sharing

This is more of a collection of Prospect ranks, but I also publish my own ranks (recently discussed here with my post-season 125 rank). It’s a good place to kind of see the trends of other sites and how they’re ranking our guys. I also do a ton of value add here, putting in starting levels each year, bonus amounts,

There’s now 270 ranks dating back to pre Washington Nationals days. We’ll get a slew of updated ranks over the course of the off-season, with the major pundits mostly publishing in Jan/Feb of next year. I’ll re-do my top 125 at that time, add in the missing 2025 with non-trivial bonus dollars plus the 2026 IFA class, remove MLFAs and other releases we make this coming off-season, and (maybe) will even attempt to do the impossible: rank all 150+ minor leaguers in one spot.

You can see i’ve already highlighted in my recent 125 rank the players who I need to revisit, who might be too high or too low. I’ve also added in placeholders for another 10 players who probably all slot into the 80-90 range (those being the rest of the 2025 class plus some of the higher-bonus dollar 2025 IFAs).

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Anyway, happy off-season. Can’t wait to see what the new regime has in mind.

Next big update to these docs will come at the end of the World Series, where all MLB and MLFAs are declared. I’ll try to keep up with the releases and the signings as best that I can, with the caveat that milb.com doesn’t always have the best record keeping.

As far as I can tell, anyone who we drafted in 2019 should become a new 6-year MLFA, and 2018IFAs also should hit MLFA unless they’ve agreed to some extension. We have a slew of 2019 draftees and 2018IFAs on our rosters who probably become new MLFAs on 11/1 or thereabouts.

• AAA: Cluff, Arruda, Solesky, Shuman, Cuevas
• AA: Naranjo, Knowles, Santos, Vasquez, Atencio
• High-A: De La Rosa, Colomenares, Otanez
• Low-A: Rivero

Here’s Part 2 of My end of 2025 look at our system; the prospects ranked 61-125. Thanks for the feedback on the first 60 (Part 1 was here) … I’ve highlighted a few players that I may have too low (Glasser,Bazzell, Vaquero) and/or too high (Schnell, Lao) and that’ll help make this list next spring a lot tighter.

So here’s part 2: the guys ranked 61st to 125th. Yes I realize ranking prospects outside a certain threshold (top 50?) becomes kind of ridiculous. Certainly you’re splitting hairs as to whether a 23yr old hitting .210 in Low-A is even a “prospect” or not. But, with just 160 or so players in the whole domestic system, you’re getting dangerously close to attempting to just rank every single player we have under contract. Maybe I’ll get there at some point, but for now, I’ve gone from ranking 100 or so in March to 125 now, basically by just pushing down everyone who had a ranking earlier this year who got “layered” by one of the 15-20 or so guys we drafted or acquired in June and July. It probably wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to literally add all the AAA org guys, all the bullpen arms in A-ball, and the DSL guys to the bottom of this list and have a completely comprehensive ranking of every minor leaguer.

That being said, I’m super curious to hear from those who might think I’m way off on some of these 60+ guys and why. And, am I completely missing someone at this point? Still possible; there’s probably a couple of DSL guys or FCL players who had better than I noticed numbers who should be here. Looking forward to a crowd-sourced improvement on this data.

Key links guiding this:

• Big Board: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/186nm-v5F-zTCoR2Be7TFYM3e2cZ-gYi2WVqJLEkHdmc/edit?hl=en&gid=1488309175#gid=1488309175
• Draft Tracker: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qd5DS9GlmkQOEh_zGhOvlhHK0EegqY1uJB4mLGmRBaY/edit?gid=0#gid=0
• IFA Tracker: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ksPorXhEHhtkNAGqxrJWqUFkvioMgoWhBU50uaZstc8/edit?usp=sharing
• This full ranking in a Google Sheet online: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xs9fmb-dctE90hTS3bdozznETS-Oc3GsMuGzRo2faUc/edit?usp=sharing

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OK here we go. We’ll go groupings of 10 players at a time:

61 (nr) Murphy Stehly 3B
62 (nr) Garrett Davila RHP (Reliever)
63 (nr) Jake Eder LHP (Starter)
64 (101) Branden Boissiere OF (Corner)
65 (25) Kevin Made SS
66 (41) Marquis Grissom RHP (Reliever)
67 (46) Brayan Romero RHP (Starter)
68 (94) Elijah Nunez OF (CF)
69 (48) Tyler Schoff RHP (Reliever)
70 (nr) Enmanuel Carela RHP (Starter)

Discussion: I threw some more relievers in here; Davila is a 28yr old AAA reliever MLFA who probably “shouldn’t” be a “prospect” but who had good enough numbers this year to possibly warrant a late season call-up. I wonder if he re-ups with the team for2026. Marquis Grissom slots in here, having a bit of tarnish on his previous rank despite getting to AAA. Lastly Schoff is here despite previously better rankings on account of having season-ending back muscle surgery in May.

We’ve also got some interesting starters in this group; We got Eder in the same deal as the aforementioned Sam Brown; he’s on the 40-man and has been a starter his whole career; not great career minor league numbers but as a lefty he seems like a future reliever. Romero spent nearly the whole season in the Low-A rotation with middling numbers. Carela was a mid-season rotation replacement in the DSL and had a 2.01 ERA for the season across 12 appearances and a slew of starts; he’s a 2025 IFA for the minimum bonus amount, the kind of “found gold” guy who would be amazing if he developed into anything of use.

There’s four positional players in here: Kevin Made takes a huge tumble from being a top-30 guy to this mid 60-s range: guy just can’t hit. Stehly meanwhile gets plopped into the rankings despite being a 2022 10th round senior sign, a 5th year senior out of Texas who nobody thought would go anywhere. Instead, he was the starting 3B in AA this year, with an OPS north of .900 and moving a top-10 prospect Wallace to 2B before getting a season-ending injury. Bravo; he’s the kind of prospect you root for. Lastly we have Boissiere, who was one step from a release in spring training but instead found some power this year and slugged his way to be the starting 1B in Harrisburg, holding a .810 OPS there. Lastly there’s Nunez, who didn’t necessarily merit a move to High-A but who hit decently once he got there: .808 OPS with speed and the ability to play center. He may still be too high, but once you get to the 60s it’s splitting hairs.

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71 (nr) Darrel Lunar RHP (Starter)
72 (nr) Adam Bloebaum RHP (Reliever)
73 (nr) Erick Mejia RHP (Reliever)
74 (61) Schultz Thomas RHP (Reliever)
75 (100) Gabriel Agostini LHP (Reliever)
76 (nr) Travis Sthele RHP (Starter)
77 (nr) Alexander Meckley RHP (Starter)
78 (89) Liam Sullivan LHP (Starter)
79 (nr) Austin Amaral RHP (Reliever)
80 (nr) Merritt Beeker LHP (Reliever)

Here’s the section where I threw in a bunch of relievers with solid numbers. Bloebaum was an Indy league signing last May; he had a 0.67 ERA this season; you read that right. He gave up just 2 earned runs in 27 IP across low and high-A, and one of them was on a solo HR he gave up in his last appearance in June before hitting the season-ending DL trip. I can’t find any injury announcement, even on his twitter, but interestingly Bloebaum is a big Driveline pitching guy, which I didn’t necessarily know before. Is a 30yr old converted infielder a “prospect?” If you can answer that, then you have Erick Mejia here. He got a ton of work this year, and moved all the way up to AAA but is a MLFA this off-season unless he re-ups with teh team. Schultz was a multi-role guy for Harrisburg all year with solid numbers, getting several “opening” starts while the AA rotation was in flux mid season. Agostini has made it back from a major arm issue last year and is here based on potential he showed in 2022 as a starter. Amaral had sneaky good numbers for a 2023 16th rounder in AA all year and could be a big find for the team. Beeker absolutely dominated Low-A this year, to the point where I have little understanding why he wasn’t promoted up; 1.85 ERA and 78 Ks in 63 relief innings.

This also seemed like a great area to put some of our remaining full-season rotation guys, namely Sthele, Meckley, and Sullivan. Sthele has become something of a punchline at Luke’s site; he just keeps on throwing. Two straight seasons where he’s been in the rotation the entire season despite middling ERA and ancillary numbers. You know who else that sounds like? Riley Cornelio. Meckley was a relatively unheralded starter picked up in the 12th round of the 2024 draft out of Coastal Carolina; he was a mainstay in the High-A rotation all year alongside Sthele. Lastly we have Sullivan, who was dominant in Low-A but was too old for the level, being on the comeback trail from injury. I like Sullivan’s chances the best of these three going forward.

Lunar is one of just three 2024 IFAs to make it stateside so far (along with previously mentioned Feliz and backup outfielder Tavarez); he pitched in the rotation for the FCL the entire season with middling results, but is mentioned here basically because he’s here ahead of the rest of his IFA class. If you wanted to argue he should be lower, i’d probably not argue.

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81 (nr) Bryan Polanco RHP (Starter)
82 (49) Carlos Tavares 1B/OF (Corner)
83 (nr) Greyson Gimenez RHP (Reliever)
84 (nr) Victor Farias RHP (Starter)
85 (57) Kyle Luckham RHP (Starter)
86 (83) Michael Cuevas RHP (Starter)
87 (51) Brenner Cox OF (CF)
88 (nr) Luke Johnson RHP (Starter)
89 (56) Chase Solesky RHP (Starter)
90 (nr) Erik Tolman LHP (Starter)

Here’s another section where we threw a bunch of starters in with various levels of success this year. Polanco somehow survived an entire year in the Low-A rotation despite turning 24 at the end of the season. Farias spent time in the FCL rotation and was moved up to be a Long Reliever in Low-A. Luckham probably has shown himself to be a AA-ceiling starter, now having two straight years of solid AA numbers but getting hit hard when moved to AAA. He doesn’t have the K/9 right now to be an effective reliever either, so I’m not sure what to do with him. Luke Johnson had great numbers as a way-too-old FCL and Low-A starter, as a 2024 senior sign for almost no money; hopefully he gets a shot in Wilmington next year. Solesky drops down after an excellent 2024 that even saw him sent to the AFL; in 2025 he was a starter for the entire year in AAA with a 5.00 ERA and perhaps has hit a plateau in terms of his progression. Tolman looked great coming off the loss of the entire 2024 season to injury, dominating High-A .. as she should have as someone who turned 26 this year. He needs more AA time to see if he’s a player we use going forward at the higher levels. He is lefty, which goes to his benefit, and perhaps his 2025 should have him slightly higher, but he’s in this range b/c he did it against kids 3-4 years younger.

Greyson Gimenez had fantastic numbers in the DSL … as a 21yr old. So, he needs to come stateside in 2026 to see if this was for real. Cuevas finally was taken out of the rotation this year and was a decent AA setup guy; can he do more?

We have a couple of outfielders in here on different trajectories: Brenner Cox was socially promoted to High-A, couldn’t hit there, went back to Low-A, still couldn’t hit, and ended the year with a .156 BA across the two levels. That’s not good. Luckily for Cox he got a massive bonus so he’ll get more time to work things out. Tavares hit really well in FCL last year; not so much this year in Low-A, hitting just .153. He signed for almost nothing as a 2023 IFA, so he’s in jeopardy already of an off-season release.

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91 (76) Jeremy De La Rosa OF (Corner)
92 (105) Holden Powell RHP (Reliever)
93 (58) Angel Roman LHP (Reliever)
94 (106) Jackson Cluff SS
95 (62) T.J. White OF (Corner)
96 (50) Max Romero Jr. C
97 (nr) Chance Huff RHP (Reliever)
98 (103) Juan Obispo OF (CF)
99 (63) Marcus Brown SS/2B
100 (66) Rony Bello 2B/3B

We’ve finally moved past arms, and now have a slew of positional players in this range. Lets talk about them, because they include a bunch of names who used to be higher.

De La Rosa has slowly fallen off, and further down, prospect lists; he was as high as #13 on Fangraphs list in mid 2024, believe it or not. After another middling season at the plate (hitting .200 in High-A), he’s now basically a non prospect. Cluff improved his slash line this year as a fill-in AAA shortstop, but is now 28, was drafted in 2019, and may be hitting MLFA. White repeated High-A for the third successive year, losing some of the power he found last year but not really improving on his .650 OPS. Romero is the classic “hanging around catcher who can barely hit but keeps moving up the ranks because every team needs a twice-a-week backup to their actual catching prospect” guy, spending this year in AA. Obispo is a $600k IFA signing in Jan 2023 who repeated the DSL for the third time this year with marked improvement. Which is good … and bad. Why did it take him 3 turns in the DR? Marcus Brown looks like Troy Tulowitzki … but hits like Troy’s 2nd cousin Bubba. I suppose he has a chance to be the next Jackson Cluff; a pure SS who can barely hit but who plays the dirt as needed. Bello got a decent chunk of bonus money in jan 2025 but was relegated to the bench in his first DSL season primarily by two guys we’ve already talked about in Marconi and Cortesia, but his investment guarantees more time.

I’ve got three arms in here: Angel Roman got 13 starts this year in low-A before mercifully getting sent to the bullpen. Unfortunately he was even worse as a reliever than he was as a starter. He’s only even listed on this page because he’s a Lefty, and may have a future as a lefty reliever. Speaking of relievers, Holden Powell solved AA this year and got a bit roughed up in AAA as a middle relief->setup guy. He’s here because he made it to AAA, even if that might be his ceiling. Lastly we have Chance Huff, who was used kind of like a utility knife in AA this year, getting a few spot starts along with longer relief. He held his own; not amazing, but enough that he might have some future.

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101 (52) Manuel Cabrera 1B/3B
102 (78) Leuris Portorreal RHP (Starter)
103 (54) Nick Peoples OF (Corner)
104 (80) Mikey Tepper RHP (Starter)
105 (71) Dustin Saenz LHP (Starter)
106 (75) Seth Shuman RHP (Starter)
107 (79) Gavin Dugas 2B
108 (85) Brandon Pimentel 1B
109 (nr) Vasquez Samuel RHP (Reliever)
110 (93) Andy Acevedo OF (CF)

So, in the 100+ range, we’re mostly talking about guys who used to be more highly ranked who have fallen due to declining performance. Fittingly, 9 of the 10 guys in this section were ranked higher last year but struggled this year.

On the “Starter” front, Saenz was in and out of the AA rotation this year and had passable ERA, but his swing and miss is lacking, and a 26yr old undersized RHP reliever seems like the first one to go. Shuman posted a 6.24 ERA as a 27-yr old this year and seems like a release candidate. He was in and out of the AAA rotation, but between pending veteran MLFA signings and rising Arms from AA (like Bennett, Susana, Tolman) who need to get to AAA sooner than later, I’d imagine his spot is in serious jeopardy. Tepper made just 2 starts and hit the season-long DL: it may be unfair to drop him 20-something spots, but that’s life. Portorreal gets credit for being part of the 2023 IFA crew that’s made it state-side, pitching in the FCL all season, but with little success.

I threw Vasquez in here with his solid AA relief numbers, but recognizing that he’s a Rule5 pick who was left available for a reason; he may be considered a dime a dozen in terms of capabilities and ceiling.

Cabrera has been moved completely off the 2B/SS and played almost entirely 1B and 3B this season; a .592 OPS isn’t going to cut it like that. Dugas was already super old upon his drafting; now he’s a 25yr old finishing up a .181 season in High-A and may be done for. Pimentel hit just .194 this year and as a NDFA with almost no investment, he’s in danger of an imminent release. With all due respect to Peoples, he’s now finished his 3rd pro season and his career minor league BA is .192. Acevedo is basically here on the back of his $1.3M signing bonus in 2023; he hit just .188 in the FCL this year.

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111 (86) Joe Naranjo 1B
112 (65) Luke Young RHP (Reliever)
113 (60) Jack Sinclair RHP (Reliever)
114 (107) J.T. Arruda 2B
115 (92) Viandel Pena 2B
116 (99) Johnathan Thomas OF (CF)
117 (82) Jared McKenzie OF (CF)
118 (81) Elian Soto 1B/OF (Corner)
119 (98) Carlos Batista OF (Corner)
120 (84) Leodarlyn Colon RHP (Reliever)
121 (64) Everett Cooper 2B/LF
122 (68) Lucas Knowles LHP (Reliever)
123 (90) Yoander Rivero 2B
124 (95) Matt Suggs C
125 (104) Nathan Ochoa Leyva OF (Corner)

Every one of the rest of these guys is here because I managed to put them in my top 100 list back in March. Some have fallen significantly. I can’t really see any of these guys being actual “prospects” anymore, but instead of deleting them off the list they’re in the 100+ section.

We’ll talk about them in groups.

Relievers: Young earned a promotion this year but was just kind of a meh RHP middle reliever in AA. Same with Sinclair; i suppose Young’s numbers were slightly better than Sinclair’s so perhaps they should be reversed. Colon was a starter in FCL last year but now is full time relief. Knowles seems like one of those lefty rubber armed multi-role types that every team needs in the minors; he’s 27, in AA, still hanging around.

Infielders: Naranjo was a super-young MLFA last year, having signed internationally at age 16. He’s a sub 6-foot 1B who slugged less than .300; i wonder if he signed for more than one year. Arruda is kind of like Cluff-lite, in AAA but with no real pathway to the majors. Pena ended the year in AAA for some reason; as a backup 2B in AA he hit .201 this year and is basically Arruda with 2 more years of control. Cooper hit just .140 this year repeating Low-A. Rivero got moved to 2B, where he backed up our better players in Low-A while hitting .201 and ending the year on the 60-day DL.

Backup Catchers: I guess I could have also included all our backup catchers here instead of just Suggs. Basically every one of these guys is in the same boat: Lindsley and Stubbs in AAA, Suggs and Farmer in AA, Colmenares in High-A, or Fagnant/Hollified in Low-A: generally speaking these guys have batting averages in the .180-.200 range, play once a week backing up the starter, and are there more for defensive skills than prospect status.

Outfielders: Thomas actually earned a promotion to AA this year, but his primary skill seems to be stealing bases, not actually getting on base. McKenzie took a big step back while repeating High-A, hitting just .167 there this year. Juan’s brother Soto hit just .139 playing 1B/LF combo. Batista wasn’t much better, hitting .140 in FCL this year. Both Soto and Batista were decent-money 2023 IFAs who are getting socially promoted based on their bonus as opposed to their talent, but that’s going to run out at some point. Lastly we have the 125th ranked Ochoa Leyva, who had just a .493 OPS this season as he covered 2B/LF for Low-A.

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Phew. Hope you’ve enjoyed this. I’d say, “did I forget anyone” but … man when ranking 125 of the players in our system, we’re getting a massive percentage of the total rosters of all our domestic teams (147 active players plus another 18-20 on the 60-Day DL), not to mention the 30 or so guys we have in the DSL. Maybe in the future we’ll rank all the way to 200.

It occurred to me … you know when the right time to do prospect evaluation is? It isn’t in March or April ahead of the next season, its right now. Well, at least until we see off-season churn, add new signings in January, add prospects in trade, etc. But for now, we’ve just finished the last of the minor league seasons, 2025 performance is fresh in our minds, we’ve added a slew of new prospects via the trade deadline and the Draft, and now’s a great time to pass judgement on the seasons we just saw.

So, here’s my top 125 Prospect Ranks for the National system, right now. I’ll list these in groups of 10, list where I had them ranked in Mid-March before the season started. I ended up writing so much that I broke this into two posts: Part 1 will be the top 60, then we’ll dive into the 61-125th ranked guys.

We’ve had a ton of prospect churn this season; we’ve graduated 10 prospects from my top 100+ list in March, including four of our top 10. Crews, House, Cavalli (who as of this exact writing needs one more start to officially graduate via IP, even though he graduated via Service time a year ago), Hassell, Lile, Lord, Nunez (another Service time vs Plate appearance guy), Rutledge, Henry, and Millas all hit MLB rookie eligibility limits this year (150 PAs or 50IP). We released another 10 guys who I had ranked in March, which mostly goes to the folly of trying to rank anyone above the top 50 or so.

Key links guiding this:

• Big Board: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/186nm-v5F-zTCoR2Be7TFYM3e2cZ-gYi2WVqJLEkHdmc/edit?hl=en&gid=1488309175#gid=1488309175
• Draft Tracker: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qd5DS9GlmkQOEh_zGhOvlhHK0EegqY1uJB4mLGmRBaY/edit?gid=0#gid=0
• IFA Tracker: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ksPorXhEHhtkNAGqxrJWqUFkvioMgoWhBU50uaZstc8/edit?usp=sharing
• This full ranking in a Google Sheet online: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xs9fmb-dctE90hTS3bdozznETS-Oc3GsMuGzRo2faUc/edit?usp=sharing

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The blocks will be in the form Current Rank (March 2025 Rank) Name position

Here’s my current top 10 for the system:

1 (nr) Eli Willits SS
2 (4) Jarlin Susana RHP (Starter)
3 (9) Alex Clemmey LHP (Starter)
4 (17) Jake Bennett LHP (Starter)
5 (2) Travis Sykora RHP (Starter)
6 (6) Yohandy Morales 3B
7 (nr) Ethan Petry 1B/OF (Corner)
8 (11) Caleb Lomavita C
9 (nr) Coy James SS
10 (nr) Landon Harmon RHP (Starter)

Discussion: So, I (like many shops) have Willits immediately going top. This is partly due to the injuries that Susana and Sykora suffered, and partly buying into the hype. Pretty much every other major shop has put Willits as #1 in our system upon his drafting too. In fact, the only shop that didn’t immediately have him #1 in our system was Fangraphs, and I’d bet they’d reconsider with Susana’s Lat surgery.

I kept Susana #2 once we found out it wasn’t Shoulder/Elbow. I know he’s still missing time in 2026, but it could be worse. I’ve dropped Sykora from a close #2 to 5th on the list behind our BA player of the year Clemmey and Bennett on the back of his outstanding season.

I remain baffled why Morales is so low on other rankings (#17 in BA, #20 MLBpipeline). I might be bullish on him, but I can’t see dropping him much below this. Petry’s inclusion to the AFL speaks volumes for the 2025 draftee; something tells me he’s going to be a pretty fast moving bat in this system. Lomavita looks like he could push Kiebert Ruiz for a job sooner than later, hitting for solid numbers in a pitcher’s park for most of 2025. I’ve filled out my top 10 with two speculative picks in the two highest profile prep players we overpaid for in the 2025 draft. These ranks could look pretty embarrassing in a year’s time, but are in line with BA/MLBPipeline’s initial rankings, so I’m happy with them.

Four of our top 10 were 2025 draft picks, an indication of just how important the 2025 draft will be to this organization going forward.

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11 (nr) Sean Paul Linan RHP (Starter)
12 (nr) Eriq Swan RHP (Starter)
13 (19) Angel Feliz 3B/SS
14 (nr) Cornelio Riley RHP (Starter)
15 (nr) Christian Franklin OF (CF)
16 (5) Seaver King SS
17 (12) Luke Dickerson SS/CF
18 (26) Jackson Kent LHP (Starter)
19 (39) Sam Peterson OF (CF)
20 (nr) Davian Garcia RHP (Starter)

Discussion: Linan and Swan seem like they’re going to be the crown jewels of the 2025 trade deadline, but finishing the year in High-A with solid 2025 numbers. Feliz is our highest performing 2024 IFA class member so far, being one of only 3 guys from that class to get off the island so far, and the only one to really make an impression state-side. He’s going to likely get pushed to 3B as he rises alongside more pure middle infielder prospects like Willits and Dickerson.

Cornelio Riley deservedly was just named the Nats 2025 Minor league Pitcher of the Year and has exploded onto the prospect radar: I did not even rank him in my top 100 last year, having held his first two seasons in relative disdain for his mediocre numbers and social promotion. How wrong do I look based on his 3-level rise this year? Franklin is an interesting one, arriving as a AAA level corner OF in a system full of OF prospects and raked. I’ve dropped Dickerson five slots from March, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but he’s probably lucky to remain this high based on a .208 hitting season. Kent ended the year in AA in his first pro season, tiring at the end but looking promising. Peterson nearly had a .300/.400/.500 season in High-A as a 2024 8th rounder from a little-regarded baseball school (Iowa). Maybe he should be higher, closer to Franklin. Garcia may be a little high here as a 2024 draftee who struggled a bit in High-A once he got there, but his Low-A debut was really promising.

Lastly, i’ve dumped King from #5 to #16. Is that fair given that he was in AA most of the time? Probably not, but it’s a good representation of how disappointing his season was in retrospect given his draft slot and bonus. I’ll bet most shops don’t dump him much past the early teens, and perhaps #16 is harsh, but there’s some serious concerns here.

As with our top 10, half this group wasn’t even ranked in March, with trade acquisitions and fantastic performances from two guys not on the prospect radar pushing their way in here. Unfortunately, that’s tempered by the plummeting of the two biggest names from the 2024 draft in King and Dickerson.

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21 (nr) Marconi German SS
22 (nr) Miguel Sime Jr. RHP (Starter)
23 (nr) Ronny Cruz SS
24 (67) Yoel Tejeda Jr.  RHP (Starter)
25 (28) Andrew Alvarez LHP (Starter)
26 (14) Tyler Stuart RHP (Starter)
27 (20) Andrew Pinckney OF (Corner)
28 (7) Cayden Wallace 2B/3B
29 (29) Brayan Cortesia SS
30 (nr) Randall Josh RHP (Starter)

Discussion: German is looking like the jewel of the 2025 IFA class so far, with a stellar DSL season where he slashed .283/.479/.513 and made the DSL All Star team. Cortesia at #29 was a bigger bonus guy and had a better average in the DSL, but had just 4 XBH (0 homers) in 40 DSL games. Both show promise.

Sime is the fourth of our four big bonus Prep 2025 draftees; he got a bit less than James and Harmon, and is a bit lower regarded from a potential perspective, but still projects as a flame-throwing starter. Cruz came over with Franklin in the Soroka trade a couple months ago and joins a slew of 18-19 yr old SS prospects (Willits, Dickerson, Feliz, James all ranked above him) competing for playing time. Tejeda was great all year but was shelved w/o notice with about a month to go in Low-A; hopefully nothing wrong there.

I’m definitely high-man on Alvarez, even given the fact that he’s made his MLB debut. For whatever reason, none of these shops rate a lefty starter who has held his own in AAA for two years then has a completely respectable debut stint in the majors. Call me crazy, but isn’t the point of prospects to get to the majors and contribute?

I’ve dropped Stuart 10 spots due to his TJ, which likely means we won’t see him til 2027. Should I have Pinckney higher? He’s a CF-capable 20-homer AAA hitter who’s a year younger than Franklin, who i’ve got 10 spots higher. Perhaps … but something just seems to be holding him up. Randall was the third of three High-A starters we nabbed in the trade deadline this year (alongside Swan and Linan) but had the roughest go of it in Wilmington (6.44 ERA). I keep him in the top 30 … for now.

Lastly, a word on perhaps my biggest “miss” of my May rankings: Cayden Wallace. I had him at #7 in the spring, thinking honestly that he might actually push House for his AAA third-base job. I was not alone in this regard, with other major shops generally having him in the 10-12 range. He punted the 2025 season; hitting .242/.310/.376 (with much of that production in one hot month). I can’t see him moving up to AAA next season (not with both Tena and Lipscomb as 3B capable players currently on the roster), at least not to open the season. Furthermore, there’s already three 2B on the AAA roster now (Baker, Arruda, Pena), so he’d struggle with playing time there as well.

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31 (44) Jose Feliz RHP (Starter)
32 (nr) Nick Schnell OF (Corner)
33 (nr) Sauryn Lao RHP (Starter)
34 (nr) R.J. Sales RHP (Starter)
35 (45) Dashyll Tejeda OF (CF)
36 (72) Sir Jamison Jones C
37 (21) Cristian Vaquero OF (CF)
38 (22) Victor Hurtado OF (Corner)
39 (87) Jorgelys Mota SS
40 (nr) Nauris De La Cruz OF (Corner)

Discussion: This group heavy on youngsters who may be moving further up soon. (Feliz, Tejeda, Jones, Mota, De la Cruz). It’s also notable how quickly our farm system thins.

Feliz is looking like the best arm out of the 2023 IFA class, having dominated the FCL this year. I look forward to seeing what he can do in full-season ball next year. Schnell may seem like an odd pick for a “prospect,” but the MLFA is still only 25 and bashed his way to AAA this year. The Rochester outfield (Schnell, Pinckney, Franklin) must have looked pretty harsh to opposing pitchers during the last half of the season.

Lao is an interesting one. He was DFA’d by Seattle a few weeks ago despite spending the entire season in their AAA rotation in Tacoma with a 3.19 ERA. He’s only 25. I think he might be a sneaky good contender for the AAA rotation to start next season, with an eye on covering in the majors quickly. He got called up to pitch out of the bullpen for the homestretch, but he’s no 4-A reliever.

Sales was probably the least heralded starter we got at the 2025 trade deadline, but he had some of the best numbers, with a 2.85 ERA in 22 low-A starts this year. He’s a college starter from UNC-Wilmington who will clearly be in our High-A rotation to start next season.

Both Tejeda and Jones are 19yr olds who may be ranked a bit high based on their 2025 performance, but who are promising. Jones is being brought along as a Catcher, which adds to his eventual value. Meanwhile, Vaquero and Hurtado remain primarily “bonus baby” prospects, and continue to leak downwards on the charts. I laugh at anyone who credibly tries to rank Hurtado in the top 20 of our system after hitting .236 while repeating the DSL. Mota could be a sneaky good prospect for us, as he hit well in Low-A while playing a ton of 3B while making way for the likes of Dickerson & Willits. He can play SS as needed.

Lastly, a word on Nauris De La Cruz, who gets a debutant ranking here after a very solid DSL debut. He signed for a pittance outside the normal signing period (they didn’t announce his 2025 IFA signing bonus, meaning it was at best $10k and likely less), but slashed .294/.448/.450 for the season. He may be a bit older than the normal DSL kid, but he still will move stateside having played mostly CF for the DSL nats.

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41 (nr) Clayton Beeter RHP (Reliever)
42 (42) Robert Cranz RHP (Reliever)
43 (nr) Browm Martinez OF (CF)
44 (47) Phillips Glasser SS
45 (nr) Juan Reyes LHP (Starter)
46 (16) Kevin Bazzell C
47 (53) Jose Atencio RHP (Starter)
48 (96) Pablo Aldonis LHP (Reliever)
49 (40) Orlando Ribalta RHP (Reliever)
50 (37) Daniel Hernandez C

Discussion: Yes, this is the first time you’re seeing relievers. I have an awfully hard time ranking relievers in the top 30, let alone the top 40. Why? Well, look no further than the makeup of the current Nats bullpen: 2 MLFAs (Ogasawara, Pilkington), 2 waiver claims (Poulin and Lao), 2 trade acquisitions (Thompson, Beeter), and two high-profile Nats failed starter prospects (Rutledge, Henry).

So, yes, I know Cranz had awesome numbers. I know Beeter and Ribalta have MLB time this year. They’re still 4-A guys who seemingly could be a 6-era or a 2-era guy in a MLB pen. Lets talk about the rest of these guys. Aldonis converted to relief this year and completely dominated across 3 levels, finishing the season with a 1.45 ERA to post some of the best numbers of any reliever in the system.

Martinez is a lottery ticket trade acquisition who was hitting .400 in the DSL when we acquired him, but who immediately hit the DL and that’s that. His ranking is incredibly speculative. Glasser gets the nod here on the heels of just being named the Nats 2025 Minor league Hitter of the Year. I still think he’s got Org Guy stink on him, but if he makes the majors as a bench guy in the same Jake Alu vein, then more power to him.

Juan Reyes was the star of the DSL rotation this year … but at age 20. It’s entirely possible his success in 2025 was “too old for the level,” but he signed for nothing and has pitched his way into an FCL look next year. Atencio missed the entire 2025 season with injury but was a 3.41 ERA starter last year in AA, so hopefully picks up where he left off.

Daniel Hernandez was a 7-figure 2025 IFA signing who is a Catcher, and he hit like one this year, posting a .552 OPS figure in his debut DSL season. #50 may be generous here.

Lastly, there’s Bazzell, who takes a mighty tumble down the ranks. He spent the entire season in Low-A despite being a 3rd round pick from a major baseball conference and put up some pretty anemic numbers, even for a catcher. Zero homers and a .283 slugging percentage. Keith Law ranked this guy #6 in our entire system earlier this year.

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51 (69) Daison Acosta RHP (Reliever)
52 (23) Elijah Green OF (CF)
53 (32) Darren Baker 2B
54 (33) Zach Brzykcy RHP (Reliever)
55 (nr) Sam Brown OF (Corner)
56 (43) Randal Diaz SS/3B
57 (27) Armando Cruz SS
58 (24) Rafael Ramirez Jr. SS
59 (55) Hyun-Il Choi RHP (Starter)
60 (13) Andry Lara RHP (Starter)

This is the section where we see a slew of more heralded prospects now getting pushed down after years of unproductivity. Elijah Green being the headliner, but joined by Baker (recently DFA’d), Brzycky (who was always too high, even for a reliever, before getting blasted in the majors), Cruz (who hit just .177 in High-A this season), Ramirez (who barely played this year after missing a ton of time on the DL), and especially Andry Lara, who was absolutely tattooed in AAA this year to an 8.92 ERA, which was nearly as bad as his MLB ERA of 8.79 in a few mop-up appearances. Yes, I know he’s only 22 and I know he throws hard, but it must be straight as an arrow to get hit as hard as he has.

is Baker a prospect at all? It’s hard to see where he goes from here; likely he plays out the 6-year string with us and moves on. He’s still got some positional value (he can play several positions in a pinch) but if the team needs backup middle infielders they’re likely moving on other names at this point.

Choi was a minor league rule5 guy who went from the opening day AAA rotation to mostly pitching out of the AA rotation all year. I don’t see a lot of ceiling here. I think he gets whacked again in AAA next year and moves to the bullpen.

Lets talk instead about the two guys in this group who seem to be moving up: Brown and Diaz. Brown was seemingly a throw-in from the Angels in the Chafin/Garcia trade, but he got to AA here as a 24yr old 2023 12th round pick and hit; .307/.384/.472 from the left side in his time here playing 1B/RF. Not bad. The other guy in this section I like a bit more: Randal Diaz was a 5th rounder in 2024 who never appeared last year and played the whole season in F’burg. He’s listed as a SS but we know Short was primarily manned all year by either Dickerson or Willits, so Diaz moved around. A lot: he played games at every infield position plus Left and Right at some point this year. We know the Nats love positional flexibility. Problem is, he didn’t hit as well as he needs to; just .229. We’ll see.

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Stay tuned for Part 2, ranking #61 to #125.

The 2025 minor league seasons may not entirely be over, but the Arizona Fall League rosters have been released, so let’s take a quick peek at who in the Nationals system has been sent.

Typically, the Nats send a hodgepodge of players who fit into one of three categories:

• Pitchers who were injured for a lot of 2025 and who need innings
• Pending Rule-5 guys who they want to see challenged against the AFL’s best
• Seemingly lesser so; our top prospects.

So of the 8 guys announced so far, what are we seeing?

Pitchers

• Aldonis, Pablo, lefty reliever who dominated in both Low-A and High-A this year in a setup reliever capacity. He’s a 19IFA so he’s been Rule5 eligible for years, but got a late start to his career so he’s now pushing up on 6yrs MLFA. Is he in the “pending Rule5 guy” category? Probably: he got plenty of innings this year.
• Amaral, Austin, He’s had a really nice season, first as the High-A closer and lately as a AA setup guy. Not a ton of K/9 but a lot of weak contact, getting BAA .216 for the season. He’s a 23 draftee so not yet rule-5, and seemed to get plenty of innings this year (69ip), so an interesting pick.
• Bennett, Jake, who finally came of the DL after missing half of 2023 and all of 2024; he’s been excellent all year as they ramp him back up. He’s in the “injured guy who needs more innings” category, in that he only got 70 for the year as a starter. He’s also newly Rule5 eligible this coming off season and is a pretty obvious protection candidate.
• Linan, Sean Paul: he only threw 3 innings for Wilmington before he hit the D/L, and thus only has 77 IP for the season as a starter. He’s in AFL to get some more work. Glad to see he’s not seriously injured; usually these “one start and DL” types are more serious.
• Simpson, Jared*, lefty reliever with weird numbers this year: 6+ era, 64/57 K/BB in 52ip. Got lots of work this year, clearly needs to work on his command; why is he in AFL? He’s a 2023 drafee and thus not Rule5 eligible til next off-season. Weird pick.

Batters

• King, Seaver. Our 1st round 2024 pick struggled all year, likely over promoted to AA, and certainly could use more work. He does check the one box of the team sending a “top prospect,” though King’s prospect ranking is sure to take a hit after his 2025 season.
• Petersen, Sam, who had a brilliant season at the plate and now holds a career slash line in the minors north of the vaunted .300/.400/.500 marker. This is probably a “show me” AFL challenge posting to see if Peterson can cut it against the top talent there.
• Petry, Ethan, our 2nd rounder from this year who many think will be a fast mover. This might be an aggressive AFL posting for a kid who was hitting aluminum bats a couple months ago, but he’s considered to be a mature hitter. Classifies as the top prospect category.

Who could make sense for an AFL stint this year:

Potential Rule5 guys to consider: there’s a few players who have taken steps up this year who are newly rule5 eligible, but none seem immediately to be an obvious protection candidate. Bennet and Cornelio are the pretty clear newly-eligible Rule5 guys who could have gotten plucked. Luckham in the same boat, ending the year in the AAA rotation. On the IFA side, the 2021 class is now coming due and even tough there’s a couple of important names on that list (Polanco and Romero, both in the Low-A rotation all year), the biggest money guy is Armando Cruz, who hit .177 this year in High-A and isn’t a candidate to get picked.

There’s some Rule5 holdovers who also might now make sense to look at: Boissiere, Tolman, Powell, Sinclair, etc. But no one really pressing. Kevin Made?

Injury guys who could use the work: scouring the AA and High-A roster, I don’t see any names that pop out as players who knowingly missed a ton of time.

Show-Me popup prospects: we’ve already talked about Peterson in this category. Our Low-A stars are too young (Willits, Dickerson, Feliz), Bazzell didn’t perform well enough.

So, that’s the 2025 slate.

Here’s the five month check-in with all our top 20 (and some) prospects. This mostly does an August focus on the prospects being mentioned, but sometimes mentions season-long stats, which are as of 9/1/25 as best as possible.

This is our prospects as I ranked them prior to the season: If i was to re-rank prospects today a big chunk of these guys would be graduated or moved. Plus, we picked up at least six guys who will feature in our top 30 at the trade deadline; i’ll put those after the top 20 in a special section to highlight their pre-Nats stats.

#1. Dylan Crews OF (CF/RF): Returned from a couple months off, played about half of August and was not good. .218/.317/.309. He’s providing positive defensive contributions so he’s somehow got a positive bWAR for the season, but this isn’t what we were expecting. He’s still plagued with a ridiculously low BABIP; .248 for 2025, on par with where he was last year. He’s at a 40% hard-hit percentage, but is over 50% ground balls. I dunno what to say here. Temperature: remains cold so far professionally.

#2 Travis Sykora RHP (Starter): Tommy John surgery. Temperature: on ice til 2027.

#3 Brady House 3B: Cooled off considerably from July to Aug, slashing just .22/.230/.278 for the month and has been losing ABs to the likes of deJong. Tangent: why the F is this team giving ABs to deJong, Bell, or any other random dude who’s going to be a FA this off-season? It makes no sense. Bell should be DFA’d tomorrow and you bring up Yepez or Morales immediately to see what they can do. You’re 30 games under .500; time to see if our AAA hitters can cut it in the majors in games that are meaningless. Temperature: cooling off as the season grinds on.

#4 Jarlin Susana RHP (Starter). Had an awesome month in August, then grabbed his arm and exited his last start. Apparently just a tendinitis issue, but it sure looked worse. On the DL, likely done for the season, and the team has to wonder how he’ll bounce back. He’s now our most important pitching prospect by a mile. Temperature: on ice for the rest of 2025, hopefully nothing more serious than reported.

# 5 Seaver King SS. Bottoming out as the season winds down; .209/.275/.282 in August. Not really the production we expected out of a top 10 1st round pick. Should he still be in High-A? Temperature: ice cold.

# 6 Yohandy Morales 1B maintained his July slash line through August, going .298/.394/.489. I’m frankly pissed that we’re still playing Josh Bell full time at this point. Morales needs to be in the majors, right now, starting at 1B and seeing what he can do. Temperature: hot.

#7 Cayden Wallace 2B/3B: well, he had no where to go but up, and up he did in August: .359/.413/.587 for an OPS north of 1000 in the month. He had one game where he went 4-5 with 2 homers and 11 TB, but he also had a 7 game hitting streak in the middle of the month to help out. Lets see if he can keep this up, if he’s figured something out. Temperature: red hot in August.

# 8 Cade Cavalli RHP (Starter): Didn’t exactly “earn” his way into the Majors other than being the only starter on the 40-man roster, but has performed well in his MLB stint so far. Temptingly good actually. We discussed it more in the Pitching post, but save for one weird start in NY he’s been quite solid. Wow, can he be a contributor in 2026? Temperature: Warm?

#9 Alex Clemmey LHP (Starter): Promoted to AA as a 20yr old; wow. Got shelled in his first 3 starts; no surprise. Went 6ip with 1H in his most recent start; that’s what i’m talking about. Clemmey should be higher on our prospect lists this coming off-season and could be in the majors next year at this pace. Temperature: staying hot.

# 10 Robert Hassell III OF (CF): Seems to have officially supplanted Jacob Young as our starting CF, which is saying something given how good a defender Young is. Slashed .246/.306/.386 in August, which is ok but not awesome, but enough to keep him in the starting lineup. Amazing how Hassell was nearly being written off in some quarters at this time a year ago, now he may have secured a starting job in the majors. Temperature: warming up.

#11 Caleb Lomavita C: had a solid month in August at the plate: .288/.325/.411. I’d like to see a bit more power, but he’s maintaining a decent slash line in AA in his first pro season, so can’t really ask for much more. Temperature: Improving.

# 12 Luke Dickerson SS/2B: put up his third straight month of hitting in the 100s, and now has to fend with the drafting of Willits pushing him to 2B. Or, frankly, the bench, if he doesn’t step up. Temperature: ice cold

# 13 Andry Lara RHP (Reliever): 10.70 ERA in August. I’m not sure what his future holds. On the one hand he’s only 22 and on the 40-man, on the other hand he’s having an absolutely awful 2025 and i’m surprised he’s not getting DFA’d. Temperature: ice cold.

#14 Tyler Stuart RHP (Starter): Tommy John. out til 2027. Temperature: on ice for a while.

#15 Daylen Lile OF (CF/RF): with Crew’s return, ABs have been tough to come by with 5 outfielders on the roster, but Lile’s bat has kept him in the lineup. For august: .304/.353/.418. That will keep you in the lineup. Temperature: warming up

#16 Kevin Bazzell C: has continued his solid July with an even better august: .333/.400/.350. Still want more power out of him, but can’t argue with .333. Temperature: warming.

#17 Jake Bennett LHP (Starter): 5 starts in AA, 0.77 ERA. I don’t care that they’re still babying his innings, he’s really shutting down the league. Only nit: not a ton of Ks; just 12 in 23 IP last month. I wonder if that’s who he is, or if he’s pitching more to contact trying to stay longer in games. Either way, He should be in AAA next season as a 25yr old and may really put his name into the mix for the Majors soon. Temperature: red-hot

#18 Brad Lord RHP (Starter/Reliever): has been inserted into the rotation to cover for injuries and may have finally reached a plateau he cannot overcome. In 2025 in the majors as a starter: 5.79 ERA. As a reliever? 2.79 ERA. I think we know what he should be in the majors. Temperature: cooled as a starter

#19 Angel Feliz SS: did not start off low-A well: .200/.271/.320 while trying to find innings at SS on a team with both Willits and Dickerson. He’s only 18, and a lot of his 24IFA class are still on the island, so no real complaints. Temperature: cold but young

#20 Andrew Pinckney OF (CF or corner): continued hitting in AAA; .317/.372/.515 with 5 homers in August. See above comments on Morales: why is this guy still in AAA? We have a 1B and a DH slot in the majors … frigging use Pinckney and Morales in those spots now. Temperature: hot.

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Trade Acquisition Update. here’s the 10 prospects we’ve acquired with their season stats and levels. They’re listed in rough order of their prospect ranking, with some quick comments on their Aug performance here:

• Linan, Sean Paul: SP: had one 3-inning start then hit the DL in High-A.
• Franklin, Christian: OF (CF): tearing it up in AAA: .296/.381/459 in August.
• Swan, Eriq: SP: 4 starts, 5.03 ERA in High-A to start. Meh.
• Cruz, Ronny: SS: in FCL, season complete.
• Randall, Josh: SP: 5 starts, 6.17 ERA in High-A to start. Meh.
• Beeter, Clayton: RP: fantastic august in AAA bullpen: 18/0 K/BB in 13ip as an 8th/9th inning guy
• Sales, R.J.: SP 5 low-A starts, 3.86 ERA, good start to Nats career.
• Eder, Jake RP; on the AAA DL the entire month.
• Martinez, Browm, OF: in DSL, on DL, season complete.
• Brown, Sam: 1B/LF: crushed it for AA in August: .365/.436/.573 for an OPS > 1.000. Awesome.

The first 6 of these 10 guys are already in our top 30 on both BA and MLBpipeline lists. I like Sales and Martinez for the back-end of that list at some point. Eder might be a 4-A lefty reliever, and Brown might be a throw in. But we got 10 guys into the system in a week, which is great.

2025 Draft Acquisition update: a slew of our 2025 draftees have already debuted; here’s how things are going for those in full-season ball (in order of their draft round):

• 1st Willits, Eli: SS: great start: .333/.417/.357 so far in Low-A, starting at SS.
• 2nd Petry, Ethan: 1B/LF: also a great start: .274/.391/.370 in Low-A, playing mostly 1B/LF.
• (our three other prep draftees Harmon, Sime, and James all are in FCL and have not played)
• 8th Maddox, Riley SP: has one brief appearance but is getting a start this week
• 9th Henseler, Wyatt 2B/3B got pushed up to High-A after hitting .351 in Low-A as a sr sign, only hit .118 in 9 high-A games so far
• 13th: Biven, Tucker, a few games in low-A bullpen so far.
• 14th Hollifield, Nick C: decent start as a backup C in Low-A: .286/.397/.304 so far.
• 15th Walsh, Jacob 1B; struggling at .117 in pro debut in Low-A.
• 18th Puk, Owen RP: a few innings in Low-A bullpen

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Notable Prospects #20 and above who are going to be ranked much higher the next time I do a list.

in MLB:

• #28 Alvarez finally got promoted and had a great MLB debut. Lets see if he can continue.
• #38 Millas finally got some PT in the majors as some have clamored for … and frigging broke his finger, ending his season. They’ve already put him on the 60-day DL, icing him even if he could come back in a few weeks.

In AAA:

• All props to Cornelio for now making it to AAA and holding his own. he’s probably the Nats Pitcher of the year, following in Alvarez’s footsteps.

In AA:

• #25 Made: remember when i was all excited b/c he hit the crap out of the ball one month? well, he remains cold, hitting just .209 in August.
• Jackson Kent, 2024 4th rounder, is now in AA. That’s awesome to see. He’ll make a big jump from his preseason prospect ranking.
• Brandon Boissiere is finally holding his own at the plate, maintaining a .800 OPS in AA this season.
• The team keeps giving Schultz and Huff spot starts/opener duties when the rotation needs a break; maybe these are possible conversions back to starters? Schultz in particular seems really effective this year, maintaining a .179 BAA all season.

In High-A:

• #39 Sam Peterson last played on Aug 13th, and sat for a week before that. No DL trip, no news. He’s been one of our best hitters all year but its curious why he would just get benched like this w/o a DL trip for so long.
• Like Peterson, High-A has also buried Yoel Tejeda on the “non playing, non DL list” for the basically the entire month. I guess they just don’t need the roster room.
• 2024 draftee starter Davian Garcia got moved to High-A deservedly, but has struggled since arriving.

In Low-A:

• Every time I see 2024 10th rounder Luke Johnson have a successful start, i’m ecstatic. Reminder: he signed for exactly $2,000. He could have refused to sign and gotten ten times that as an NDFA; why he agreed to sign for that is kind of beyond me, but he’s holding his own and I hope he continues.

In FCL:

• Season Complete: a few guys have been moved to Low-A, most done for the year.

In the DSL:

• Season complete, and I havn’t seen a single promotion state-side from the 2025 roster. Probably not a huge surprise since FCL is done too and none of these guys can go straight to F-burg.

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That’s August. One more of these to go at the end of the season.